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then carefully pulled away the wrapping.
    “I found these in the woods when I was hunting today,” he said. Osborne reached for his reading glasses, then leaned forward to examine his prize. Lew, having finished her pizza, shoved the paper plate to the side and looked over at him, mildly curious. She checked her watch.
    “Those look like my great uncle’s,” said Bruce.
    Osborne picked up the dental plates separately, turning each back and forth under the bright light. “Odd,” he said after a few seconds. “I should see some ID engraved on these—a name or a Social Security number—but …” He turned the dentures over, peering closely. Finally, he set one on top of the other and leaned back in his chair.
    “Now that is the strangest darn thing …”
    “Expensive items to forget, huh, Doc?” said Lew. “What’s a full set of dentures cost today? Five, six thousand bucks?”
    “Something like that,” said Osborne. “But not these—these were never meant to be worn. The teeth you see in dentures are artificial—these are real.”
    “Whoa, biohazards,” said Bruce, scraping his chair back as he stood up to reach for his jacket. “Be careful, Dr. Osborne. Maybe you should have gloves on?”
    “And each tooth is from a different person … the wear patterns on the biting surfaces don’t match.”
    “You’re the expert, Doc. You tell us,” said Lew, standing up to put her paper plate and napkin in the trash.
    “And none have been ground to fit,” said Osborne. He looked over his glasses at Lew. “These are not dentures, they’re models, sculptures. Someone assembled these with no intention of anyone ever wearing them. And to find all these teeth and fit them so well … someone spent
years
making these. Years finding teeth so closely matched in size and color. Now why would you do that?”
    “Maybe they’re very old and were used in a classroom once upon a time,” said Bruce.
    “That’s a thought,” said Osborne.
    “Would they be worth money?” asked Lew.
    “Well, they could have historic value—who knows? They could be a collector’s item … they could be priceless.”
    “If you’re into teeth,” said Bruce.
    Lew laughed.
    Osborne reached into the kitchen drawer behind him for his needle-nosed pliers. Grasping one tooth, he gave a gentle twist. Off it came, exposing the gold pin that anchored it to the base. Osborne held the pin up to the light.
    “This is expensive gold,” he said. “You can’t even buy gold like this today.”
    He looked up at Lew and Bruce. “I had planned to put these back right where I found them, but now I’m not so sure I should do that.”
    Lew shrugged. She could not be less interested. She was right, of course. Who cares about a bunch of used teeth when you’ve got four legs missing.
    “Doc,” said Lew, checking her watch again, “could we try Ray one more time?”

seven
    Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.
    —Henry David Thoreau
    “Yo, I smell pizza. Any left?”
    A blast of cold air hit the trio in the kitchen. The door to the back porch swung open as something resembling a six-foot-five-inch uncooked bratwurst backed its way into the room. Tipping its head sideways towards the kitchen table, the face was half-hid by a hood rimmed with wolf fur. All you could see were miniature icicles frozen into the auburn curls of a full beard and the gleam in one eye. But it was a gleam in the eye of a very happy man.
    “What’s up, Ray?” asked Osborne, unable to resist a tone of irritation in his voice. His neighbor had a knack for commanding attention at just the wrong time.
    Lew leaned back against the kitchen counter, crossing her arms as she rolled her eyes. She was not in the mood to be held hostage by any Ray Pradt shenanigans.
    “Did you get my message?” asked Osborne.
    “Ta da!” The figure, humongous in its gray-green parka, swung around and nearly decked Bruce with a set of fat